La Belle Dame Sans Merci Annotations

Title is French- The Language of Love. Title translates to: ‘The Beautiful Woman Without Mercy/Pity.’ The woman in the poem speaks French and that’s why the knight misunderstands her. The poem has a circular structure, repetition of the first knights’ words at the beginning and end of the poem. The first and last stanzas are almost identical. Lots of lines are repeated throughout. Title taken from a medieval poem, romanticism celebrated medievalism and its traditions. Written in the form of a Literary Ballad: Tells the story in a simple way, similar to a song or folk ballad, (embracing traditions). La Belle Dame Sans Merci

This is the first speaker as he is talking about another knight, asking rhetorical questions. IThe first and second stanzas contain anxiety and uncertainty of the first speaker and foreshadow the pain and trouble that will come to the second speaker No birds singing is a metaphor for there being no life around or no life for the knight ‘Ail’ means bringing someone down through pain or trouble. This foreshadows the discomfort the second knight will experience later in the poem. Oh what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,

Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.
IIWe would think a ‘knight-at-arms’ as a muscular and strong hero. However the hero is portrayed to be ‘haggard’. This is a derogatory term for a woman being used for a man, ‘Haggard old woman’. Pathetic Fallacy is used to set a dull mood. Binary Opposite: Winter, (when the harvest’s done), is cold in comparison to the sunshine that a knight would bring. This could also be a metaphor for the fact that the knight is food for the woman, so he gives her power. Oh what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,

So haggard and so woe-begone?
The squirrel's granary is full,
And the harvest's done.Imagery of Nature is used to create a somber mood and tension in the atmosphere: Lilies are associated with funerals and death and fading roses with illness and death but nature usually has positive connotations. III

Negative connotations of nature: ‘anguish moist’ and ‘fast withereth too’ suggests a change in the woman or change in the power of nature. Quatrains: Regular four line stanzas for clarity could be seen as a representation of the woman’s power and stability. I see a lily on thy brow,

With anguish moist and fever-dew,
And on thy cheeks a fading rose
Fast withereth too.The Imaginative description and comparison of mythical characters suggests that this woman is not genuine, she may not be real as ‘a faery’s child’ would be a figment of the imagination and ‘her foot was light’ so she’s not down to earth. IV

Meads are meadows or forests. Highlights dream elements of beauty and nature. ‘Wild’ eyes suggest the power of forces of nature and so suggest the beautiful woman is not trustworthy. I met a lady in the meads,

Full beautiful - a faery's child,
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.The idea of the knight making the woman a garland a bracelets suggests that he is adding to the power of nature and is causing his own failure while trying to bring himself happiness. Assonance: The repetition of vowels could represent a spell being cast on the knight by the woman. V

Sexual Imagery: Used to show the intentions of the knight and the extent of his foolishness after several warnings of danger. Rhyming: The second and last line of every stanza rhyme, (ABCB), adds an element of repetition and reinforcement of Keats’ message to both the speakers and the reader. I made a garland for her head,

And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She looked at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan.
VIA ‘pacing steed’ is a horse. This shows how he is trying to impress her and please her with power that he doesn’t hold. Dreamy Imagery of mythical characters: ‘A faery’s song’, portrays the ideas of idealism and individuality in the Romantic Movement and shows how persuasive this woman is....

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...`LaBelleDamesansMerci" or "The Beautiful Lady without Pity" is the title of an early fifteenth-century French poem by Alain Chartier which belongs to the tradition of courtly love. Keats appropriates this phrase for a ballad which has been generally read as the story of a seductive and treacherous woman who tempts men away from the real world and then leaves them, their dreams unfulfilled and their lives blighted. For all the beguiling simplicity of the surfaces of this literary ballad, it is one of the most difficult of Keats's poems to explain, and open to many interpretations. It has been alternately suggested, for example, that it is about the wasting power of sexual love and / or the poet's infatuation with his muse. This particular analysis will examine the `LaBelleDamesansMerci' as a poem about a femme fatale and offer a feminist interpretation of the ballad. A femme fatale or fatal woman conventionally tempts man with her beauty and ultimately causes his destruction. There are many such figures in traditional supernatural ballads concerned with a faery's seduction of a human; notable examples include Tam Lin and Thomas the Rhymer.
That the knight-at-arms in this poem has been enchanted, enthralled, is immediately suggested by his wandering in a desolate wasteland where the plant life has withered and no birds sing. He...

...Fact sheet: LaBelleDameSansMerci by John Keats
This poem is about an ill knight, who is found by an anonymous person and asked why he is loitering in this withering place (stanzas 1-3). Then the knight tells his sad love story about a lady he once met in the meads and with who he instantly fell in love with. She took him to her grotto and revealed therefore her fairy origin. She fed him and talked in an incomprehensible language (stanzas 4-8). She lulled him asleep and he had a horrible nightmare, where loads of death-pale noblemen appeared. All were warning him from “LaBelleDameSansMerci” (stanzas 9-11).
The poem ends how it started, the knight lies close to a lake even though no life is around (stanza 12).
Formal understanding
Form Ballad with 12 stanzas of 4 lines
Rhyme scheme a-b-c-a
The first three lines have generally eight or nine syllables but the last line has only four or five syllables.
Tone Melancholic, dramatic, love-sick, mysterious
Language Simple Early Modern English, very descriptive
Sentence structure There are only a few verbs but a various number of modifiers.
Sometimes the sentence structure is slightly inverse:
e.g.“And there I shut her wild, wild eyes with kisses four.”(8th stnz.)
Modifiers Many modifiers express sadness or illness:
e.g. haggard, ail, pale, cold, woe-begone, starved...

...Michelle Kfoury
Professor Butterworth
ENG 201
4/30/2013
Comparative Analysis of “LaBelleDameSansMerci” and “The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock”
It comes as no surprise that love poems are not a rare commodity. Whether they’re about a lovesick man pining for his soul mate or a general reflection about how one perceives love, these poems offer an analysis of one of the most innate desires of our human nature. Despite inevitable differences in writing style and point of view, there can be times where love poems employ similar strategies to tackle such an analysis. John Keats’ “LaBelleDameSansMerci” and T. S. Eliot’s “The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock” are no exception to this occurrence. Both poems use two different and distinct settings to asses their experiences with love; the first setting to characterize the protagonist of the poem being alienated and abandoned with respect to love; the second setting to recall or imagine love as if to resolve their alienation and solitude. Further comparative analysis will show that the settings in both poems allow for the protagonist to offer a universalization of love through self-reflection.
The first setting of both poems begin by establishing a world of despair, suggesting that the protagonist has been alienated or abandoned with respect to love. “La...

...Of all the themes in poetry, one that is most commonly used and stands out quite a lot is love. T. S Elliot once quoted “Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion”. As such, it is no wonder that the themes of unrequited love and despair are very prominent in poem LaBelleDamesansMerci by John Keats. In this poem Keats clearly denotes his personal rebellion against the pains of love and revealed the sad reality that; in pleasure, there is pain. This paper will take a closer look at one of the most prominent themes in LaBelleDamesansMerci; Love and Despair.
The poem begins with a forlorn and heartbroken narrator suffering from both physical and emotional pain, ‘So haggard and woebegone’ (l 6) who meets a beautiful maiden. LaBelleDamesansMerci appears to portray to readers the universal anomaly of what is known as unrequited love. In conjunction to love felt equally by two parties, unrequited love occurs when the love felt by one person is far greater than that felt by the other who is loved. The term unrequited literally means ‘not returned or rewarded’. This denoted the unfairness in the balance that one expects in a love relationship when the love that one feels for another is not reciprocal. In the poem, Keats shows this by...

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Love and Death in Keats’ “LaBelleDameSansMerci
Hereby I certify that the essay conforms to the international copyright and plagiarism rules and regulations.
Student’s signature:
Ditti Kovács
Boglárka Kiss
British Literary Seminar
05 May 2013
Ditti Kovács
Boglárka Kiss
British Literary Seminar
2013.05.05.
Love and Death in Keats’ “LaBelleDameSansMerci”
In poetry the most important things are to express feelings and to tell a story. Obviously most of the time these poems are about life, death, the meaning of life, love, but it can also tell a complete story. Throughout the history, basically every poet has written about love and death. Because of the fact that these themes surround our whole life, it is not surprising that these topics have an impact on people’s mind, and they have to deal with these in a way, and poetry is perfect for this. People have always been interested in the question of death, the unfulfilled love and suffering, and because of the fact that these feelings are related to every people in the world somehow, these poems, which deal with these themes, are considered to be the most beautiful ones. These works can be understood easily, and readers can feel close to the poet’s feelings. In the early 19th century, in Europe, people became interested in the folk roots of...

...Keats uses many methods to tell the story in his poem ‘LaBelleDamesansMerci’. The story is first hinted at in the title, which translates as ‘The beautiful woman without mercy’. For those who know of Keats’ background, it is easy to assosiate this poem with his instinctive distrust of women. Keats’ mother abandoned him in 1806, and these feelings of neglect influenced his poetry heavily, as he writes of women trapping men for their own gains rather than out of love. This is also visible in this poem, such as when Keats refers to a ‘garland’ and ‘bracelets’, both of which are circular in shape. Because of this, and that they are therefore unbreaking and of a similar shape to handcuffs, they could be a metaphor for entrapment, as well as the Belle Dame’s treatment of men, which is a constant cycle. This metaphor is portrayed more clearly in stanza 10; ‘They cried- LaBelleDamesansMerci Thee hath in thrall!’. Keats portrays women as cunning creatures who toy with men and use them.
The title also links the poem to Alain Chartier’s poem, and relates to traubadeurs-men who used to court married women who were unattainable, much like the BelleDame described in Keats’ poem. Both of these things link ‘LaBelleDamesans...

...and ‘LaBelleDamesansMerci’ portrays two different experiences of the power of love. Show how successful each poet has been in representing this idea.
In both the poems ‘Sonnet 116’ and ‘LaBelleDamesansMerci’, love is a common theme. However, love has had many different interpretations over time and we see this as both poems portray different approaches and emotions about this inescapable part of life. Shakespeare who wrote ‘Sonnet 116’ believes in love being forever lasting and that no matter how hard love can be you will continue to love that person forever. However, in a contrasting view to this, Keats who wrote ‘LaBelleDamesansMerci’ believes that love can ruin you and describes elements of loss and pain which no one can escape.
Firstly, ‘Sonnet 116’ is a classic love sonnet consisting of 14 lines with three stanzas. Sonnets are frequently found in older poetry and end in a couplet to summarise the hypothesis’ which are said throughout the poem. This usually helps shift the mood of the poem and starts to question what has been suggested; ‘If this be error and upon me proved, I never writ, nor no man ever loved’ this suggests that if what Shakespeare wrote is wrong, and that love is not forever lasting, then he has never written and no one has ever...

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Reflection on “La Bella DamesansMerci”
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ENG 125
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Reflection on “La Bella DamesansMerci”
Reflection on “La Bella DamesansMerci” is an informative paper on the elements that are interesting and help to support the written poem by author John Keats in the year of eighteen hundred nineteen. John Keats was born October 31, 1795 and died February 23, 1821 at the age of 29 from advanced stage of tuberculosis. While “on his deathbed Keats requested that his tombstone bear no name, only the words “Here lies one whose name was writ in water.” (Modern Library Edition, 1994. Intro pg., 7, pargh 7). John Keats has an intriguing way with words that make you think and wanting more to read in the poem. When John Keats was writing this poem he actually “took the title from a poem by the medieval poet, Alain Cartier. It means, the beautiful woman without mercy.” (Melani Home, (2010). There is a natural setting to the poem, form, language and content with in the poem that stands out and help with the reading of the poem. While John Keats’ poem “La Bella DamesansMerci” was written in the eighteenth century, there is gloom and betrayal with the added theme of love all wrapped up in one poem.
The...